Fin - Daily Ticker - US

LinkedIn Soars, Pandora Crashes: IPO Market Alive And Well!

After a decade in which almost no tech companies went public, the IPO market for hot tech startups is finally alive and well.

Professional social network LinkedIn went public a few weeks back in a spectacular debut. Even after a steady decline in the stock price since then, the company is still valued at around $7 billion, or more than 10X this year's expected revenues

Earlier this week, online radio pioneer Pandora went public. Despite immediately getting hammered with a "SELL" rating by analyst Rich Greenfield of BTIG, an independent firm, the stock is still trading above the expected offering range, valuing the company at more than $2 billion.

And other Internet companies like HomeAway, BankRate, Groupon, Zillow, and Yandex have gone public or have filed to go public.

Some have taken the surge of Internet IPOs as a sign of a "new tech bubble," but the truth is it's nothing of the sort. So far, most of the companies that have gone public are mature companies, with significant revenue and earnings. They are the sorts of tech companies that usually went public in the two decades leading up to the tech bubble, and their growth (and growth prospects) are the reason that investors should be excited by a resurgence of tech IPOs.

Also, unlike the IPO market of the late 1990s, in which most tech IPOs saw huge first-day "pops" in which their stock prices traded way above their IPO prices, the reaction to the current crop of tech IPOs has been far more mixed. And this is healthy. A market in which every investor who participates makes money encourages recklessness and stupidity--the cocky giddiness that often goes hand in hand with market bubbles. In contrast, in today's IPO markets, investors who pay too much for IPOs get burned. And that's the way it should be. This will discourage reckless risk-taking and dissuade folks who should never even consider buying risky tech stocks from buying them.

The barriers to going public are still high, but the market has clearly "opened up" versus where it was a couple of years ago. This is a good thing. Not only for tech companies, which can now access a new source of capital and liquidity, but public-market investors, who will once again have more companies they can consider investing in.

Conventional wisdom dispensed by financial planners about taking Social Security largely boils down to this: Wait as long as you can. Forty-eight percent of women and 42 percent of men who claimed benefits in 2013 did so at 62, which is the most popular age to start getting Social Security. Part of the reason is that, in some circumstances, waiting simply doesn’t make sense, “The decision on when to start Social Security depends on factors such as how long you expect to live, cash flow needs and marital status,” says Daniel Galli, a certified financial planner in Norwell, Massachusetts.

U.S. home values rose again in October, and a handful of states reported increases exceeded the national average. Housing prices increased 6.7 percent in October compared to the same month a year ago, ...

Dec.08 -- Taiwan is again a potential flashpoint in U.S-China relations, after Donald Trump broke protocol by talking with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. Taipei is also re-asserting its claim over contested territory in the South China Sea. Bloomberg's Stephen Engle reports from Taiping in the Spratly Islands.

Donald Trump has demonstrated pretty remarkable flexibility on any number of issues over his years in public life, and that was never more on display than Wednesday when it was announced that he had been named Time Magazine Person of the Year.

Large banks in Britain want the UK government to allow their industry to remain subject to EU laws for up to five years after Brexit, a move likely to enrage eurosceptics who want to break away from the bloc's legal system as soon as possible. The banks - international players - are also pressing the government to allow the European Court of Justice to rule on decisions related to their businesses during that period, according to a document reviewed by Reuters. The document was drawn up by law firms on behalf of banks lobbying the government for a departure in stages from the EU.

Tata Sons' interim chairman Ratan Tata reached out to shareholders of Tata group companies on Wednesday, seeking their support to remove Cyrus Mistry from the board of these companies. Mistry's continued presence was a "serious disruptive influence", he said. In a bitter boardroom coup in October Mistry was ousted as chairman of Tata Sons, holding firm of the $100 billion Tata empire, but he is still on the board of some group companies.

Dec.08 -- Bruin Sports Capital founder and CEO George Pyne discusses TV ratings for National Football League games, slowing growth at ESPN and the new media model for coverage of athletes. He speaks with Scarlet Fu on “What’d You Miss?”

German pilots' union Vereinigung Cockpit said it would resume wage talks with Lufthansa next week and hold back on further strikes during negotiations, offering some pre-Christmas respite to passengers and the airline. Lufthansa and its unions have been embroiled in a row over contracts dating back to 2012, with 15 walkouts since early 2014 costing the carrier hundreds of millions of euros in lost profit. Lufthansa wants to cut staff costs by making pay more flexible and revamping pension schemes.

China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) criticized the United States on Friday for thwarting a Chinese investment fund's proposed acquisition of German semiconductor equipment maker Aixtron . Aixtron announced on Thursday that China's Fujian Grand Chip Investment Fund had dropped its 670 million euro ($710.60 million) takeover offer to buy the company, after the United States blocked the deal on security grounds. "The U.S., in the name of national security, frequently departs from market and commercial principles to interfere with normal business activity," said MOFCOM spokesman Shen Danyang.

The European Central Bank will pour another half-trillion euros ($579 billion) in newly printed money into the eurozone economy to support its recovery as the currency union heads into what could be a ...

The Senate will take up the repeal of the Affordable Care Act on the first day of the new Congress, Jan. 3, setting up an historic clash between President-elect Donald Trump and his GOP allies and Democrats and an array of health care industry groups over the future of the government health care system. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced Tuesday that the Obamacare repeal would be “the first item up in the new year,” after conferring with Vice President-elect Mike Pence and other GOP leaders.

BENGALURU/MUMBAI (Reuters) - Gold premiums in China held near three-year highs this week amid fears of limited supply of the precious metal, while demand in India remained subdued despite lower prices due to a severe cash crunch. The import curbs may be part of China's efforts to limit outflows of the yuan after the currency's slide to its weakest in more than eight years, traders said. China allows only 13 banks to import gold, including three foreign lenders, according to the Shanghai Gold Exchange.

A black woman often described as Canada's Rosa Parks for her 1946 decision to sit in a whites-only section of a Nova Scotia movie theater will be the first Canadian woman to be celebrated on the face of ...